A graduate of Boyertown Area High School and now an electrician from West Pottsgrove, Acosta is one of a growing group of rock climbers who find winter thrills climbing rock faces when they are covered in ice.

“I do it because it’s an adventure and I really enjoy being outside,” Acosta explained. “It’s good exercise and you’re out in Mother Nature.”

Acosta spoke as he held the belay rope for Ted Coffelt, another West Pottsgrove resident, who was making his way up a rippled, dripping, crackling wall of ice that is roughly 50 feet high.

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Called “Birdsboro Waters,” the wall was created when the Robeson Township property just outside Birdsboro was used as a quarry for diabase rock, like that used in road construction. The quarry also holds a reservoir that is part of the water supply for the Birdsboro water system.

Both Coffelt and Acosta are members of the Birdsboro Area Climbers Association, a group of enthusiasts who climb the wall in warmer temperatures as traditional rock climbers, shifting to ice climbing when the mercury plummets.

“But with ice climbing, you make your own holes with the ice ax and the crampons (spiked foot-brackets they strap to their boots), whereas with the rock, you have to use the existing hand-holds,” he said.

The ice provides a different, constantly shifting set of challenges.

Not all ice is created equal, said Coffelt, who is also a member of the Pottsgrove School Board.

The conditions Tuesday, when Coffelt and Acosta agreed to lead a Mercury photographer and reporter out to the site, were close to perfect, they said.

After a long period of cold temperatures, it had warmed up enough Tuesday afternoon for the ice to soften.

“When you look at pictures of glaciers, you can see they’re kind of a blue color, that’s old ice and it’s blue because a lot of the oxygen has been forced out of it,” Acosta said, adding that the best conditions are climbing “old ice” in warmer temperatures.

Climbing in colder temperatures can keep the ice very hard “and it can chip when you hit it with your ice ax,” he explained.

The ice ax — which has a jagged, toothed point in front and a lip on the bottom of the handle — is just one of an array of specialized equipment used by ice climbers.

Coffelt said his cost about $300 each.

“It’s an expensive hobby,” he said with a sideways smile.

With an ax in each hand, the ice climber swings his or her ice ax in an overhead arc to sink the point deep into the ice.

This is where the value of “plastic ice” becomes evident.

Because it is less brittle, “plastic ice” is more likely to provide a secure grip on the ax point, its presence can be confirmed by the definitive “thunk” it makes as the ax tip buries itself into the surface.

With less plastic ice, “you can swing the ax and the ice will shatter and it’s sharp,” said Acosta, who had just descended from his first climb. “I’ve had it slice my face.”

“You can swing your ax and you’ll actually plate off a big piece and it can land on you, so it’s a little scary,” Acosta said.

To make things a little less scary, ice climbers have several other pieces of equipment.

In addition to wearing helmets, they carry rope lines and “ice screws,” which have carabiners through which ropes are threaded. These are screwed into secure ice to provide an extra element of safety.

While some might not consider “ice climbing” to be a phrase which belongs in the same sentence as “safety,” Coffelt said it’s really just a question of managing the risks. “Once you know the risks, you can manage them,” he said. “You take a risk when you cross the street.”

Those risks increase depending on the grade of the wall being climbed.

The two local climbers agreed the wall at Birdsboro Waters is a “grade 3,” which is a scale used mostly to describe both slope and height.

“When it gets straight vertical and it’s over 30 feet, it’s a grade 5,” said Coffelt. “That’s when it gets really difficult to stay on there and it’s really difficult to put the screws in. And when it’s a grade 6 or 7, that usually means there’s a sick overhang.”

A climber for more than 10 years, Acosta said he got his first taste for it “when I was a little kid and I went to the rock gym. Then, when I was out in Wyoming, I ran into some people who had an extra harness so I went out with them and ever since then, it’s been climbing all the time.”

By strange coincidence, when Acosta and Coffelt arrived at the wall with their media entourage in tow, they not only “ran into some people,” but one of them was from Wyoming.

Martin McManus lives in Story, Wyo., and works as a drilling roughneck when he’s not working as a climbing guide.

In Pennsylvania to visit with his mother, Mary Kay McManus, who lives in Urbana, McManus said he wanted to get some climbing in while he was here.

With him was Josh Huntley, who hails from Wernersville but now lives in West Palm Beach where he works as an engineer on a yacht owned by auto racing team owner Roger Penske.

So yes, he left West Palm Beach.

In February.

To visit Pennsylvania during one of the harshest winters in decades so he could climb ice.

All types of people come to climb here, said Coffelt, who is also the president of the Hay Creek Association, a land and watershed preservation group that helps oversee and watch over the preserved Birdsboro Waters property.

Finding people from far-flung areas at the climbing wall is not that unusual.

“This is one of the most popular climbing sites in a five-state area. People come from New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia as well as Pennsylvania,” Coffelt said.

The nearest climbing areas are above Quakertown, at a site called “the narrows,” and in Lehigh Gorge State Park near Jim Thorpe, said Coffelt.

“That’s why it’s nice to have a place like this that you can drive to that’s local,” said Coffelt.

Whether the visitors are local or from outside the area, Coffelt said the climbing group and Hay Creek Association are trying to encourage visitors.

The property is part of the larger “Big Woods,” the largest undeveloped area in southeastern Pennsylvania, which also includes French Creek State Park and other preserved parcels.

A key area for watershed protection, the Big Woods are part of “The Highlands,” the last of the Northeast’s portion of undeveloped forest which once stretched from the East Coast to the Mississippi.

The Birdsboro Waters parcels were preserved for the Birdsboro Municipal Authority with the help of a series of grants arranged by the Natural Lands Trust, said Coffelt.

But just because the land is preserved as “designated wilderness” to protect Birdsboro’s water supply, Coffelt said, does not mean it cannot be enjoyed for recreation in an appropriate way.

And for the climbers, the appropriate way to enjoy a 45-foot nearly vertical wall of ice is to climb it, even when you can hear the water gurgling behind it.

“Ah no, that doesn’t bother me,” Coffelt said when asked if the sound of running water didn’t make him think twice about climbing the sheet of ice.

“That’s normal to hear that, in fact once when I was climbing in New Hampshire, I put the ice ax into the ice and a geyser of water that was under pressure came shooting out,” said Coffelt. “Listen, we can see how much ice is there and this much ice is incredibly strong.”

Besides, he said with a knowing smile, the climbers are protected by their mantra: “Ice climbers don’t fall.”

About the Author

Evan Brandt has worked for The Mercury since November 1997. His beat includes Pottstown, the surrounding townships and the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts, as well as other varied general topics like politics, the environment and education. Reach the author at ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
or follow Evan on Twitter: @PottstownNews.